news@michigandaily.com NEWS The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 3 i Selli7gfetwehy for a cause Economist addresses effects of insurance on heath care access * Collaborators will describe book project on opera Artist Kim Anno and poet Anne Car- son will discuss their collaboration on a book project at noon today in the Oster- man Common Room of the Rackham building. The book, which incorporates Anno's art with Carson's interpretation of a hypothetical opera, is called "The Mirror of Simple Souls." Anno, who originally taught at the California College of the Arts, is in residence as the Paula and Edwin Sid- man Fellow in the Arts. Carson is a professor of classics, comparative literature and English. The Institute for the Humanities will sponsor this event. Campus, city to discuss Detroit public schools The Brown v Board of Education Initiative will present the student film "Past, Present and Future" at 7 p.m. today in the Anderson Room of the Michigan Union. The film is part of a conversation with parents, students, teachers and alumni on the topic of the Detroit Public Schools. Refreshments will be provided. CEO to address digital technology The College of Engineering will sponsor Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Craig Barrett to speak tomor- row at 4 p.m. in the Dorothy L. and Harry E. Chesebrough Auditorium in the Chrysler Center. He will discuss the influence of digital technology on organizations and individuals and also review opportunities for technological advancements. The event is part of the annual Goff Smith Lecture program. Barrett will also receive the Goff Smith Prize, the University's highest external award for achievements in science and engineering. Former Detroit mayor to discuss public service American Bar Association President Dennis Archer will speak as part of the 2004 Citigroup Lecture tomorrow at 4 p.m. in the Pendleton Room of the Michigan Union. The title of Archer's speech is "Why Public Service Mat- ters." Archer, who served as mayor of Detroit from 1994 to 2001, worked on initiatives to develop businesses and reform government. He also practices law in Detroit. A reception in the Wolverine Room of the Union will follow the lecture. Symposium to conclude Brown theme semester Undergraduate and graduate stu- dents in the Brown v. Board of Educa- tion themed semester classes will present their research in a multimedia symposium Thursday at 3 p.m. in the first floor Ballroom of Haven Hall. Featured projects will include maps of urban school busing, audio docu- mentaries on the history of blacks in radio broadcasting and an oral history of Jones School, a predominantly black elementary school that was closed in a 1965 district integration plan in Ann Arbor. Journalists to discuss Middle East coverage Middle Eastern and American jour- nalists will compare coverage of sui- cide bombings and the capture of Saddam Hussein on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the Rackham Amphitheatre. The panel includes Yavuz Baydar, of the Milliyet Daily Ombudsman from Istanbul, Turkey and Washington corre- spondent Nathan Guttman from Haa- reetz, an Israeli newspaper. Lawrence Pintak, the Howard R. Marsh Visiting Professor of Journal- ism, and Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellows Fatih Turkmenoglu and Salwa Kanaana will also speak. The Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies will sponsor this event. s Speakers discuss By Koustubh Patwardhan Daily Staff Reporter About 750,000 people in Michigan - or about 7.5 per- cent of the state's residents - are without health insurance, according to the 2000 Census. To raise awareness on these issues, a group of medical students is organizing a weeklong campaign with various lecturers on campus. Yesterday Helen Levy, an economist at the University of Chicago, spoke about the effects of insurance on access to health care. Levy pointed out how health clinics provide access to health care to those with private or public insur- ance such as Medicare and Medicaid and those without insurance. To gauge the availability of health care for people with and without insurance, Levy referred to an audit survey she recently helped conduct. Trained interviewers posed as if they had been discharged from a hospital emergency room and were asked to obtain a follow-up appointment at a health clinic. Levy and her colleagues made more than 860 calls to more than 430 clinics, and the results were surpris- ing, she said. The study found that having insurance did not greatly alter the chance of getting an appointment at a health clinic as long patients could pay the bills. "You may not need insurance, but you need cash," Levy said. People with private insurance were more likely to get an appointment than people with public health insurance because sometimes public health insurance companies do not compensate health clinics to the extent that private health insurance companies do, added Levy. "The results were surprising (because Levy thought) clinics would be reluctant to like the uninsured," said Levy. "You may not need insurance, but you need cash." - Helen Levy University of Chicago economist Levy said 90 percent of people acquire health insurance through fringe benefits they obtain as part of their salaries. On average, 5 percent of the total compensation paid by employers is in the form of health insurance. Currently, about 15.5 percent of Americans are without health insurance. Of the people insured, two-thirds are insured through a private insurance plan while others are insured through pub- lic plans. Levy said people without insurance are at a financial risk. University Medical student Steve Warnick is organizing a visit to Lansing in addition to the weeklong events held at the Medical Science Building II. The students plan to stage a rally to voice their concerns to lawmakers, on the lack of insurance. Medical School student Nick Boncher said health insurance needs to be improved. "The facts presented are really interesting but the problem needs to be worked on," he said. He added that the system needs to reformed so people do not solely rely on the emergency room as a means to health care. All of the lectures are held from noon to 1 p.m. at the West Lecture Hall in the Medical Science Building. On Fri- day, there is a keynote address by University President Mary Sue Coleman. Members of United Asian Medical Student Association sell jewelry for a fundraiser in the Michigan Union yesterday. MEDIA Continued from Page 1 said. Then stereotypes can create a nega- tive image of how certain groups of peo- ple are expected to act - expectation that minorities will be pressured to abide by in real life, Hirschfeld said. Some University members said they see these same negative effects from day to day, adding that the entertainment industry is largely to blame. Engineering sophomore Clinque Brundidge said she hates what she calls the one-sided image of blacks projected by hip-hop music videos. Because of those videos, people out- side the black community already feel those images are accurate for all blacks, she said. "Many people (nationwide) are unac- customed to blacks, so seeing things like that become their primary perception. ... And when they encounter a black person they have a pre-conceived notion of us," Brundidge said. Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs Coordinator Sha Duncan said the stereotyping jokes on different eth- nicities often are brought to life when groups outside of the black community embrace what they see and think is black culture. "They think they are being friends when they say, 'Wut up dawg!' But people don't do that. I speak proper English." But Tony Fox, Comedy Central's vice president, said critics of comedic stereo- typing should also be aware of the posi- tive effects of using them in entertainment. Fox said the network always deals with issues of overusing stereo- types. But he added that the comic characterizations featured on their shows are more than just for a laugh. Fox referred to his network's popular comedy-skit series "Chap- pelle's Show," starring comedian Dave Chappelle, as an example of how TV can reveal the deeper injus- tices in American society by using stereotypes. "Chappele's deals with a lot of hot topic social issues. One of those issues is racism. (Dave Chappelle) tries to ridicule that racism, pointing out some of its absurdities," Fox said. Chappelle does this by playing off viewer's expectations of stereotypes, by exaggerating them, to show how ridicu- HONORS Continued from Page 1. sional struggles of a newspaper colum- nist during World War II. The program has had its share of hits and misses when selecting summer readings. Wessel Walker mentioned that the selection for 2001 - "The Huron River: Voices from the Watershed," edited by University English profs. John Knott and Keith Taylor - received a luke- warm response. "We got the most nega- tive responses to this book," she said. She added that the book's subject did not engage many Honors freshmen. "Kids coming to Ann Arbor don't have much interaction with the river," she said. Wessel Walker added that a book sent for summer reading sends a strong state- ment about the Honors Program to incoming freshmen. "We wanted to say we're about books you read for pleas- ure and the life of the mind," she said Have You Graduated... From Your lous those ethnic and sexual stereotypes truly are, Fox added. "He has something to say and he's saying it's all ridiculous. I think he is trying to open minds by trying to show some of the foolishness in all the prejudice within society. ... He's not letting people sweep racism under the rug," Fox said. Fox also said he isn't convinced stereotypes have any sort of negative impact on viewers since there has been no scientific evidence to sug- gest it. Regarding other shows such as Com- edy Central's "Banzai," which minority groups allege negatively stereotypes Asians, Fox said he doesn't think the show has gone anywhere near to the extent some viewers argue. Instead, he said most people who watch shows like "Banzai" realize that those characteriza- tions are satirizing, and can respect that it is a joke. Still, some students are unsure that everyone will understand that it's all for comedy, and think the stereotypes are a form of exploitation in using different ethnic and sexual groups just to get a laugh. Rather than thinking viewers will understand the comedic stereotypes, LSA senior Josie Najor said, "It gives the illusion that people are learning about minorities. ... It gives a distorted image." She added that this distorted image is a negative image. "(Entertain- ment) is trying to portray groups, but the way they see them, it is definitely inferi- or," she added. But other students said everyone can laugh at jokes that stereotype and still understand that they're likely not intended to be serious portrayals of minorities. Engineering freshman Mike Nolte said his gymnastics team - which is comprised of all different ethnic groups - watched "Chappelle's Show" during a bus ride, with the entire group understanding that it was a joke and not meant to reflect any ethnic group. "We were all just laugh- ing. It was all fun," he said. But Nolte added, stereotypes are not always played off as well as they are on "Chappelle's Show" and they can be offensive to a certain group. "(Stereotypes) can be funny. But there is a right place and a right time. The right time is when you know the other person who is being stereotyped is going to be laughing with you." Corrections: Please report any errors in the Daily to corrections@,rmichigandaily.comr INVESTMENTS Continued from Page 1 at a significant competitive disadvantage, Garcia said. The University typically invests in private equity or venture capi- tal firms that normally invest in small start-up companies that develop new technologies. "When you have a brand-new company that is dealing with new technology, they want to protect their trade secrets and any investment strategies," Garcia said. "Because they partner with a public university, a competitor can come in and FOIA these secrets, and that puts them at a disadvantage." Peterson added, "The University's inability to protect such sensitive, proprietary information from public disclosure has hurt our ability to invest in these promising arenas." Each year, the University invests close to $3.5 billion in corporations to keep a diverse investment portfolio, Universi- ty records show. One of the newest outlets for University investment is the Life Sciences Corridor, which attracts many new ven- ture firms in the biological science field. The Life Sci- ences Corridor is a statewide project backed by a 20-year commitment of support from Michigan's tobacco settle- ment fund. The LSC is a collaboration between the University of Michigan and Michigan State and Wayne State universities, and is designed to provide research opportunities for scien- tists in the state. "The reason I agreed (to sponsor the bill) was I was famil- iar with the Life Sciences Corridor," Garcia said. "I believe we need to diversify the economy in Michigan so we're not so dependent on the auto industry." Votes in the Legislature showed the widespread support for the bill - the House voted 105 to 1 in favor of the bill on March 31, and the Senate voted 33 to 4 with one abstention in favor of the bill on March 24. But one of the only problems associated with the new amendment was that the bill contained no provision for pub- lic involvement in how University endowment funds are invested. Initially, the bill would have allowed the University to keep the names of corporations confidential, and many student groups work to maintain investment transparency at the Uni- versity. The problem was addressed early in the bill's drafting by the Michigan Press Association and resulted in a number of adjustments. According to Peterson, the writers of the bill consulted with the Michigan Press Association and followed its recom- mendations to keep certain investment data open. For example, names of all companies in which the Uni- versity invests and the aggregate amount of money invested in them will stay public. Other information in each company portfolio will remain secret. Garcia also expressed his support for the MPA's amend- ment. "When (the MPA) came with their concern, they asked for a simple amendment," Garcia said. "We have no problems with that. The intent was not to deny information in terms of who the University was investing in, the impor- tance was to protect these small companies who they're investing in." MCRI Continued from Page 1 court ruling will provide "clearer guid- ance" as to what MCRI should do. "We remain confident that Judge Manderfield was legally inaccurate in ordering the Board of Canvassers to do what they did," O'Brien said. Apart from MCRI's petitions, the board approved nine other petitions under review yesterday, board Sec- retary Christopher Thomas said. Under consideration were ballot ini- tiatives on a number of issues, including legalizing marijuana, banning gay mar- riage and reinstating the death penalty. The board also reviewed a petition crafted by Law School alum David Boyle. His initiative seeks to amend the state constitution to ban legacy preferences. "I think it's a more authentic civil rights initiative because it focuses on taking preference from bigwigs and fat cats," Boyle said, who opposes the MCRI ballot initiative. He added that MCRI's campaign works against minorities and women. The delay in the decision to approve his petition has been delayed - he GoT A submitted it in January - may make it harder for Boyle to reach the threshold < p CALL 763- of 300,000 signatures. Boyle said he wants the petition to 2459 be more than symbolic and would be happy to get any number of signatures. for more information call :i34/,8-C2fi The University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts presents a public lecture and reception RIchard Abel Robert Altman Collegiate Professor of Film Studies Wednesday "